Optical Media Interface Lab (Mukaigawa Lab)

Mission of our lab

Light emitted from a light source, reaches to our eyes,
after reflecting on a surface, refracting as it
enters/leaves on a glass, and scattering inside a
transparent object in a scene. By just looking an object,
we, human, are able to recognize not only the surface
physical condition (i.e. roughness and shininess) but also
various kinds of object properties to decide the impression
of the object. Thus, light must be a medium which
transports various kinds of significant information of the
scene. Our challenge is to develop an interface, which is
named "Optical Media Interface",
to share with information of the scene between human and
computer according to the light transportation. To provide
computers the ability of scene understanding from the
"Optical Media Interface" is the aim of our research.

Computer Vision

We analyze the behavior of the light reflection on a surface,
and scattering inside an object. This analysis should be a
basic technology of material estimation and 3d shape
reconstruction.

Computer Graphics and Feeling of Material

To reveal a mechanism of human visual perception, we develop
human visual interface to represent reliable material
appearance and feelings.

Computational Photography

We develop a method to generate images according to the
computation of the light distribution captured by a
specialized camera.To compute the distribution of the light
captured by a specialized camera, we develop a method to
generate an image which cannot be obtained from a conventional
camera. Using this computation, we are able to generate an
image taken by simulated virtual camera with physically
impossible settings.This enables us to provide an image which
we have never seen before.

Development of Sensing System

A Light transportation in 3D space contains various kinds of
significant information, but a camera can only captures a 2D
image of the scene which is just a subset of the light
transportation. Therefore, constructing optical measurement
devices with specialized mirrors and lenses, we challenge to
capture the light transportation.